Chris Welch Times Entertainment Writer

He left corporate world for a chance to develop backpacking ministry For 17 years, Chris Holden had been climbing mountains in the corporate world, trying to reach a summit that just seemed to get higher and higher.

The more he climbed, the more he wondered where he was going.

"I was trying to balance work and family, church and God," said Holden, 40, who had been a salesman for a small aerospace and defense company since '92. "I was in a great rewarding career that was perfectly fine. But I just wanted more than 'fine.'

"I kept thinking that if I could just get that next contract, hit that magic income level, and keep the wife and kids happy, I would finally realize the epic life I had glimpsed as a child. The truth was, I was chasing the wrong dream."

During the last couple of years, that dream changed.

God intervened and gave him another mountain to scale. He's now leading a backpacking ministry, Born Wild Adventures, which takes people on hikes to places like the Appalachian Trail, the Sierras and other mountains as well as rafting trips, challenging them physically and spiritually.

Talk about a leap of faith.

As his friend and mentor Bruce Martin, teaching pastor at Cove United Methodist said, "It's a huge - I can't say 'huge' loud enough - financial undertaking for Chris."

God shows up

Holden, married with two young children, quit his financially stable job to lead souls through the wilderness. If that's not scary enough, it came last year right before the economy tanked.

"In a nutshell, I put myself where God better show up," Holden said, sounding a bit like David in Psalms. "Of course, God always show up, it just may not be the way you expect all the time.

The transformation started in 2002 when he picked up John Eldredge's "Wild at Heart," a book about the masculine truths most guys grow up learning from their fathers. It proposes each of us has a key role in an epic adventure that extends far beyond the beginning and end of life we see.

The transformation continued in 2005 when Holden took hikes with Martin, who was then leading Born Wild Adventures.

"I started to feel that God was planning something unbelievable with my life, a position He had been grooming me for since I was a child," Holden said. "I knew God wanted me to live from the passions of heart, but I couldn't see exactly what that might look like."

Martin saw God working on Holden in the wilderness and knew he would be the perfect man to carry on the ministry. He noticed Holden's leadership, outdoor abilities and his sincerity. Martin asked him, as they flew back from a trip to the Sierras in 2007, if he would take the reins of the ministry.

"When we first started this, we were getting out in the wilderness and enjoying God and listening to God," Martin said. "Chris went on the first couple of hikes at Cove Church and became more and more consistent person, like 'Count me in.'

Martin's call was an answer to prayer, Holden felt. He had begged God when he was journaling on an Appalachian hike in early 2007 to tell him where he needed to be.

"It had been almost a year and I had some frustration with God," Holden said. "I thought, 'I don't know what you want me to do here. I'm committed and ready. You're going to have to send somebody to me and tell me what to do.'"

He got that answer when Martin handed over the reins of Born Wild Adventures on the plane ride home. Since that moment, Holden has taken group hikes on the Appalachian Trial from Georgia to Virginia, been on the High Sierra Trail and other trails, loving every minute of it.

As the group leader, Holden plans the trips and also becomes a walking chaplain, sharing a spiritual message during the day and then leading the discussion around the campfire at night. The hikes become a way for people to challenge their faith while they challenge the wilderness.

For a guy just breaking into his 40s, it's a dream ministry, and Holden is determined to do it as long as he can.

"It's very possible Born Wild Adventures could be dissolved the next two years, but I know God has my back and it will work out the way God has planned," Holden said. "I may sell wire again, but I know what God has put on my heart today: It's to get out there and discover life in this wilderness setting."

Born Wild Adventures
161 Hartside Road
Owens Cross Roads, Ala. 35763
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